President,
We are pleased to note an emerging consensus on the need for efforts by all partners, to enhance food and nutrition security.
Already in 1996, the World Food Summit made clear that food security exists when all people, at all times, have physical, social and economic access to sufficient safe and nutritious food that meets their dietary needs and food preferences for an active and healthy life.
However, the Secretary General has reminded us that every day, nearly 10,000 children are dying from causes related to malnutrition and at least eight hundred million people are going to sleep hungry every night. This is clearly a moral outrage.
President,
The present report of the Special Rapporteur of the right to food underlines the importance of a legal framework for the right to food and gives us an encouraging overview of the development. Latin-America stand out as an inspiration for other parts of the world. Today more than eight countries are possessing specific laws aimed at promoting and protecting the rights to food.
In Asia, and worldwide, India is an inspiration with her National Food Security Act and the world’s largest food security programme.
President,
We would like to raise one issue today with the Special Rapporteur of the right to food.
In operationalizing the right to food into laws and policies, a buffer against land-grabbing and over-exploitation of natural resources could maybe be developed. Could the Special Rapporteur share examples of laws of relevant legislation for these challenges?
President,
This inter-active dialogue is clustered with the Special Rapporteur on adequate housing, who gives us a useful overview of challenges to the implementation of the right to adequate housing by the local or subnational government level. She concludes that those groups who are disproportionately affected by the challenges identified facing local governments, including insufficient resources, tend to be the most marginalized groups. The Special Rapporteur gives us a couple of disturbing examples, including the situation of residents of informal settlements in many cities around the worlds.
We have one brief question: In the context of a discussion of the limits of the realization of the right to adequate housing at subnational government level, where does the Special Rapporteur see possible synergies with the realization of the right to food?